AUBURN | Greg Sankey went into the SEC meetings in Destin, Fla., at the end of May with what appeared to be a solid plan for the future of the college football playoff.
More than three weeks later, it’s possible no changes will be made to the format for 2026.
There was also momentum building for a nine-game conference schedule in the SEC to align with the Big Ten and Big 12. That could be out the window too.
More changes are being discussed in regards to the start date for college football, a separate division for the Power 4, moving Signing Day again, summer OTA’s, the transfer portal and even more conference expansion or consolidation.
All this comes on the heels of the House settlement being approved and revenue sharing officially beginning July 1.
In a time when college football supporters need stability more than ever, its leaders continue to bring more uncertainty.
The SEC and Big Ten appeared to be in alignment going into the SEC meetings in Destin, Fla. Even though the 4-4-2-2-1 model for a 16-team college football playoff drew a lot of criticism for its guaranteed spots, it was preferred by Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti partly due to the revenue that could be generated from the potential of two play-in games.
It would also mean more revenue by moving to 16 teams and it would mean the SEC moving to a nine-game conference schedule and potentially setting up a SEC/Big Ten challenge in football, which would — you guessed it — generate even more revenue.
And when you have conferences as big as the SEC (16) and Big Ten (18), which contain so many traditional powers, there really needs to be more to play for than just first place.
But many of the SEC coaches pushed back hard on the 4-4-2-2-1 model, favoring the 5+11 one instead, which would provide automatic spots for the five highest-ranked conference champions.
The SEC coaches also prefer an eight-game schedule, putting the SEC and Big Ten at odds over two key issues.
Maybe the two conferences can figure it out by the Dec. 1 deadline and we’ll have a 16-team playoff in 2026, or maybe not.
But regardless of whether you favor four automatic qualifiers for the SEC and Big Ten or just one, or a nine-game or eight-game conference schedule, what does it say about the leadership of the SEC, particularly Sankey, that we are in this mess right now.
A prepared leader would have gone into the meetings knowing exactly what the coaches wanted or didn’t want and would have already taken steps to come up with a unified solution.
A strong and influential leader — what college athletics needs more than anything — would have had a clear understanding of what was best for the SEC and college football and enough “je ne sais quoi” to influence others to his point of view.
Sankey was neither. And then ended the meetings by handing out a memo titled “A Regular Season Gauntlet,” that needed seven pages to explain the difficulty of an SEC schedule.
It was an embarrassingly beta move from a conference and a commissioner that’s supposed to be leading, and another in a long series of examples of the poor leadership that has plagued the NCAA and conferences over the past decade.
And now we’re counting on these same failed leaders to implement a revenue-sharing plan that isn’t ripped to shreds by the courts.
We’re counting on them to decide whether the Power 4 should become its own governing body. It should but who will be in charge?
Should the start of the college football season be pushed back to what is currently Week 0? What about Signing Day moving to June or July or OTA’s replacing spring practice in part or in whole?
What should be done and can be done to reign in the transfer portal and the massive player movement that has been a major disruption to college athletics?
All these issues have to addressed in a thoughtful, meaningful and successful manner. College football and college athletics need consistency. The Wild West era needs to come to an end.
Unfortunately, you can't trust the current leadership to get it right. They’ve just gotten it so wrong for so long, it’s hard to expect anything other than more failure.
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In today’s musical journey, we go back 46 years to the release of a band’s biggest hit that included a fiddle showdown against the Prince of Darkness. On June 23, 1979, the Charlie Daniels Band released “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 100 and No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country charts. Daniels didn’t write the song until he realized the new album they had nearly finished recording at Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, Tenn., didn’t include any fiddle-oriented songs. It was inspired by a poem Daniels read in high school, "The Mountain Whippoorwill" by Stephen Vincent Benet. The entire band received a writing credit for the song even though Daniels wrote most of the lyrics, which involved the Devil coming to Georgia and challenging Johnny to a fiddle duel. Johnny wins the duel and a golden fiddle as the prize. One of the lines in the song, “I done told you once, you son of a bitch, I’m the best there’s ever been,” was changed to “son of a gun” for the radio release. The band performed the song at Gilley’s, a real nightclub in Pasadena, Texas owned by country music singer Mickey Gilley, in the 1980 movie Urban Cowboy, which featured John Travolta, Debra Winger and Scott Glenn. It was also featured on a Muppet Show episode and the 2000 movie Coyote Ugly. “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” won a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group in 1979. It’s ranked by Rolling Stone as the 120th best country song of all time.
Charles Edward Daniels was born in Wilmington, N.C., in 1936 and grew up listening and performing Pentecostal gospel and bluegrass music. He played with the bluegrass band Misty Mountain Boys in the 1950’s. He moved to Nashville in 1967 where he began as a songwriter and session musician playing fiddle, guitar, banjo and mandolin. He co-wrote an Elvis Presley song, “It Hurts Me,” and played on a Bob Dylan album. He also played fiddle on Hank Williams Jr’s 1979 song “Family Tradition.” Daniels recorded a self-titled album in 1970 and formed the Charlie Daniels Band in 1972 and had their first hit with 1973’s “Uneasy Rider.” His 1974 song, “The South’s Gonna Do It,” became Jimmy Carter’s campaign theme and the band played it at his inauguration in 1977. His other hit songs include 1974’s “Long Haired Country Boy,” 1980’s “The Legend of Wooley Swamp,” 1986’s “Drinkin’ My Baby Goodbye” and 1989’s “Simple Man.” Daniels, who was a fan of the Tennessee Volunteers, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016. He passed away of a stroke in 2020 at the age of 83.
